The Awful Truth
by Johnathan-117
Summary: Just because you’re a war hero, doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with everything your military does. John117 is no exception to this. What does the UNSC’s most wellknown and highlyregarded supersoldier actually think about the state of affairs in which


** Private Journal   
Log in: Orphan  
Password:  
Access Granted  
New Entry **

A wise man once told me, "Son, war is hell." And he was right. War is hell.  
I've watched men dying on the battlefield, screaming for their mothers and fathers to come help them.  
I've watched women cut down by plasma as they run, carrying screaming babies in their arms.  
I've seen children, teens, abandon their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters abandon aging parents, to run away to save their own lives. I've seen children abandon baby siblings in order to save their own lives.  
I've watched soldiers turn on their commanding officers, just to escape having to delve into the thick of combat.  
I've been shot with plasma, kicked, bitten, scratched, clawed, mauled, trampled, and stabbed… by both the Covenant and our own UNSC soldiers.  
War is hell because it brings out the worst in people, both on and off the battlefield.  
On the battlefield, sometimes, I can justify what I see. Sometimes, I can understand it. I understand that the need to survive sometimes overrides empathy, overrides logical reason and the moral fiber that, I hope, really does exist in every man, woman, and child in the United Nations… even if I myself have never really been privy to any of it.  
But that's in the service, and on the battlefield, where I can justify the worst in people  
Off the battlefield.  
Hero.  
Savior.  
Messiah.  
I've been called a lot of things over the years.  
The media would have you believe, that I'm some sort of angel, sent from the Heavens to wreak humanity's own holy, righteous vengeance on the Covenant. A savior who will bring about the end of this war, who will bring and end to death, destruction, and conflict.  
Of course, according to the media's opinions, I'm also the only fucking SPARTAN in existence, never mind that there are thirty other MJOLNIR clad super-soldiers whose exploits never once get mentioned. According to the media, once the SPARTANs are on a battlefield, the battle is won… Even though we lose the planet. They paint the picture of grateful civilians and soldiers alike, smiling in adoration as green armored super-soldiers defend them with pride and grace and bearing. They paint the battlefield out to be some big ice cream social, once the SPARTANs hit ground.  
The media tends to lie.  
Either that or I need to get some of the shit that those people are taking, because it must be one hell of a fun trip.  
You see, the truth is this. No one stops to smile at us when we're planet side, no one stops to thank us. They just run screaming past us – we part the tides of people like rocks in the middle of a river.  
The regular soldiers are worse. They really could give a shit less about 60 billion dollars worth of energy shielded armor, encasing God only knows what. They tell us to get out there and fight off the onslaught, and to keep out of their line of fire.  
I saw a newsreel the other day, of a campaign I was on a week ago.  
They zoomed in on a unit of Marines, valiantly firing away, putting up one hell of an opposition. They cut back to a reporter, talking. Then they cut to one of us, 104, battling it out with an Elite using nothing but his knives, and defeating it. Pro-war sentiments went up by seventy-five percent, a forty percent margin over last week's polls.  
Me?  
I'm wondering who was the dumb sonofabitch that risked their life to retrieve that footage. Because I wasn't more than four hundred yards away, when I saw the pair of Hunters come crashing through the side of the building, right next to those Marines.  
The guy with the camera took it the worst. He went out impaled through the chest on one of those spines that those mean bastards have on their shoulders. The other guys were cut down by fire, trampled, or beaten to death by those two.  
So I guess it was good that the censors cut scene when they did. Otherwise, gasp shock amazement, people might realize that we're actually fighting a goddamned war here. That dumbshit who retrieved the footage is more devoted to his military than even I am, I guess… So dedicated to it that he would risk his life to preserve a filthy lie.  
I don't understand the need to glorify war.  
I don't understand the need to tone it's horrors down for the public.  
I don't understand the need to candy-coat the very real fact that we've been losing this war since day one, and that unless more soldiers enlist, they're going to have to reinstate the draft, because not even the supply of convicts can keep the military staffed for good.  
Hell, I don't understand how no one can understand how bad the war really is.  
But then again, the military is really all I've ever known.  
Dim memories of a life before becoming a soldier, isn't really a life.  
Sometimes, it startles me to hear how much everyone loves the military nowadays. I remember once, Mendez telling me, that people outside the military would never under stand us, would never understand me and mine… because most people would never know what it meant to have another man's life, his blood, on their hands. Me and mine are privy to the greatest secret our military harbors – the fact that the UNSC's beloved SPARTAN poster children, were originally incepted to stop full scale civil war. That our original intent and purpose was to perform brutal and precise strikes against rebel targets, to enforce the rule of the UNSC over every one of humanity's colonies. We were designed to be a-  
Designed.  
As it we were machines built for a specific procedure.  
Funny how indoctrination strikes when you least expect it.  
But whatever the case may be, as it stands, that's what we were made for. And if anyone outside the military knew that, I wonder if they would love me and mine so much the next morning.  
See, the truth is that, in the end, the Covenant is doing to the UNSC, exactly what the UNSC was going to do to humanity. Eliminating all that don't mesh with it's views. I can almost applaud them – they do a much better job than the UNSC ever could.  
Sometimes, my fellow SPARTANs read what I write here, over my shoulder, and they call me a nihilist.  
Sometimes, I think they might be right.  
** End Entry  
End Session  
**


End file.
